Week 4: Monday, September 15th - Friday, September 19th
Goals for this Week
- Discuss
the role of an overall claim in a response. Explain how an effective
overall claim provides focus and clarity for an essay that addresses a
specific audience. Explain that an effective claim can help students “map
out” a response that is then a matter of development. Explain the notion
of the essay map. Your discussion should help students move beyond
generalized responses and begin thinking about how an overall claim
reflects their purposes and audience needs, focuses their response, and
helps shape an organizational structure for their essay.
- Review
portfolio requirements for essay one and address student concerns about
meeting those requirements. Reinforce student understanding of what is
involved in writing an effective summary/response essay.
- Bring
in a sample response, perhaps one that you’ve written in preparation for
teaching this course.
- Review
peer review techniques and conduct a brief workshop on students’ responses
to the Bollinger or Thernstrom essay as well as a full workshop on their
drafts of the summary/response essay they choose to use for the portfolio
evaluation.
- Develop
evaluation criteria (rubric) for the portfolio, making sure that they
understand that focus (of purpose, audience, and message) is the number
one evaluation criterion. Clarify that development of the argument is the
next concern for you and for them, and that reasons must be accompanied by
evidence. Also clarify that better papers will then go the next step to
provide a level of discussion and explanation for the connection between
evidence, reasons, and overall claim. Make sure that they understand that
mechanics (grammar) are a lower level concern but that carefully written,
well-edited and proofread manuscripts send a strong message that the
writer has taken special care to present a polished product. If you
develop a consistent evaluation approach that follows these guidelines,
then your expectations will be predictable for your students—and by the
end of the course they will have gone some distance toward accomplishing a
deepening of the substance of their writing, rather than just focusing on
superficial mechanics.
You
may want to use the “Evaluating Student Writing” idea from the Activities Bank
that accompanies this syllabus. This classroom activity helps students become
better evaluators of their own work and familiarizes students with “rhetorical
terminology” that composition instructors commonly use, especially when
evaluating (grading) student work.
- Review
necessary components of Portfolio 1 (what must be included in the folder),
and provide students with a postscript that allows them to reflect on
their processes during the first four weeks of class. You may wish to
prepare a list for the board or overhead with the portfolio components
given, and you may wish to delay the postscript until the beginning of the
class when the portfolio is turned in.
Activities for this Week
Detailed lesson plans are available for the first four weeks
of the course. Beginning in the fifth week, you will be expected to choose
activities from a set of suggested activities and/or develop your own
activities that will help you and your students achieve the course goals for a
specific week.
Teaching Resources
